ChinaEconTalk

ChinaEconTalk

By SupChinaBusiness
Download on the App Store

ChinaEconTalk episodes

  • Chips Avengers 2023: Chips Act + AI Revolution

    The Chips Avengers assemble once again! Reva Goujon of the Rhodium Group, JP Kleinhans of the European think tank SNV, Jay Goldberg of Digits and Dollars, and Dylan Patel, who writes SemiAnalysis.

    In this episode of ChinaTalk, we all:

    • Deep dive into the CHIPS Act's recent Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO);
    • Discuss the potentially existential impact of AI on global power dynamics;
    • Consider the true intentions of the October 2022 export controls — from military constraining China to crippling manufacturing in the broader economy;
    • Muse about the potential for a "splinternet" to emerge as countries around the world — in particular, the US, China, EU members states — adopt different standards and regulations for their tech industries;
    • And more!


      • Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_Amc4Ysv0

      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

      56 min
    • TikTok Hearing: The End of an Era

      Kevin Xu, Obama-era White House official and creator of https://interconnect.substack.com/ comes on ChinaTalk to discuss:

      • Our impressions of the House's TikTok hearing
      • Continued cross-border reliances around batteries and cloud computing
      • The missed opportunity of Zhang Yiming's generation of founders
      • GPT4's remarkable translation capabilities

        • Outtro Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA

        Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

        59 min
      • Kotkin on China

        Stephen Kotkin is a legendary historian, currently at Hoover, previously at Princeton. Best known for his Stalin biographies, his other works include Uncivil Society, Magnetic Mountain, and Armageddon Averted.

        Our discussion on China is far-ranging yet in-depth — we manage to pack in:

        • The two dominant subjects taught at the CCP’s Central Party School;
        • Kotkin’s assessment of the main threat to Communism — what “Communism with a human face” means, and why Gorbachev’s reforms ultimately destroyed Communism in the USSR;
        • Why the CCP fears color revolutions more than, say, NATO expansion — and why Xi snapped on Hong Kong in 2020;
        • The twin components of Marxism-Leninism: anti-capitalism + anti-imperialism;
        • And an understanding of Lenin’s “commanding heights,” and what China’s commanding heights are today;
        • The case for optimism about US-China relations, despite — or because of — the recent ratcheting up of tensions;
        • Why Kotkin believes a US-China Cold War is both good and necessary;
        • How the US can get on the diplomatic “front foot”;
        • Making sense of Reagan’s foreign policy — how he was both a “movement conservative” and a “dealmaking conservative.”


          • Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4GLAKEjU4w.

          Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at https://www.chinatalk.media/.

          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

          1 hr 16 min
        • GPT4—AI Unleashed?

          How will GPT4 change the world?

          What implications does it have for policy, economics, and society?

          How will US-China 'racing dynamics' play out and what are the implications for AI safety?

          To discuss, I've brought together the AI Justice League: Zvi of 'Don't Worry About the Vase', Nathan Labenz of Waymark, and Matthew Mittelsteadt of Mercatus.

          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

          1 hr 24 min
        • The CIA’s China Capabilities

          Dennis Wilder returns to ChinaTalk — this time with some broader thoughts on how the US intelligence community can rise to the occasion vis-à-vis China. In particular, we discuss:

          • The importance of government hiring those with experience living in China;
          • Contributions that the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) has made to China intelligence, and why it should be reinstated;
          • A serious request to make an ChatGPT as good as Alice Miller is at analyzing CCP documents; https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/clm57-am-final.pdf
          • Why the State Department has established China House and the CIA has established the China Mission Center;
          • What we can learn from Richard Danzig’s Driving in the Dark; https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/driving-in-the-dark-ten-propositions-about-prediction-and-national-security%C2%A0
          • How to maintain robust intelligence capabilities in the long-run;
          • Raymond P. Ludden and the “Dixie Mission” — and why the US needs more Luddens today. https://uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu/essays/we-need-more-luddens


            • Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE

            Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at https://www.chinatalk.media/

            Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

            40 min
          • Economic Warfare: Implications for Sanctions Today

            Welcome back to the second part of my conversation with Nick Mulder and Lars Schönander.

            Picking the narrative up in 1935, get real in this episode:

            • Why the Great Depression, counterintuitively, made importing commodities cheaper, and how that affected Germany’s and Japan’s protectionism;
            • The difference between autarky and autarchy;
            • Whether Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could survive a full-on fuel embargo today by using Nazi-era technology;
            • Nick’s definition of “temporal claustrophobia,” and what it has to do with Japan ultimately siding with the Axis;
            • Parallels between the “ABCD circle” (America, Britain, China, Dutch East Indies) and the semiconductor export controls today;
            • Why having an empire was a liability for Britain;
            • What sanctions had to do with the Czechoslovaks — even with a larger army — falling to the Nazis;
            • How the blockades of WWI differed from WWII;
            • And what lessons pro-decouplers should learn from this history of sanctions.


              • Nick’s book recommendations:

              • https://www.amazon.com/Athene-Palace-Rosie-G-Waldeck/dp/1592110088
              • https://www.amazon.com/World-Late-Antiquity-150-750-Civilization/dp/0393958035
              • https://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590171462
              • https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Maisky-Diaries-Volumes-Communism/dp/0300117825


                • Nick’s excellent book: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Weapon-Rise-Sanctions-Modern/dp/0300259360


                Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5mdvyIqrs4


                Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at https://www.chinatalk.media/.

                Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                1 hr 2 min
              • Economic Warfare: A History

                Today we’re releasing part one of our a two-part conversation with Nick Mulder, a history professor at Cornell and author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War — a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022.

                With cohost Lars, Schönander, we discuss:

                • The recent advent of the use of sanctions (for example, in the Crimean War, Britain continued to fulfill payments to Russia, the nation it was fighting right then!)
                • Why Europeans were reluctant to employ blockades and sanctions in the early twentieth century, and how their thinking evolved through two world wars
                • How Wilson’s notion of “moral sanctions” and decision to keep blockades in place after the war were important to the development of sanctions, especially during the interwar period
                • The League of Nations’ efforts to establish a “positive sanctions” fund, and why the concept never took off
                • Nick’s take on why Hoover is underrated
                • When and why Italy almost fought a war against Germany over Austria


                  • Stay tuned for part two, when we connect this sanctions history to implications to US-China relations today!

                  Nick’s excellent book: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Weapon-Rise-Sanctions-Modern/dp/0300259360


                  Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzd4VtkNjmc


                  Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at chinatalk.media.

                  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                  1 hr 18 min
                • How does AI actually work, anyways?

                  Data scientist Bryan Cheong breaks down how AI actually works, creating video using AI and how the technology is being used beyond image and language models.

                  Also, I've got a meetup March 7th in Palo Alto! https://partiful.com/e/dVY7k51xQX4WhNr6AUcH

                  Joined by Zheng, we also discuss:

                  • The farmers in India using AI for marketing
                  • Denoising and weights, the tech behind AI image generation tools
                  • What's next for developments in AI
                  • Singapore's tech scene


                    • Outro music: 我說所有的酒都不如你 by 房東的貓 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2zj74iK1MI

                    Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at chinatalk.media.

                    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                    50 min
                  • Will Xi Give Putin Arms? Has A Cold War Already Begun?

                    Today we’re going to do a show about the scariest US-China news story I’ve seen in years, that “The US has intelligence that the Chinese government is considering providing Russia with drones and ammunition for use in the war in Ukraine.”

                    Would China really arm Russia, and if so what will that mean for the world if the US and China end up on opposite sides of a proxy war?

                    To discuss this I have on today Georgetown’s, Dennis Wilder, a longtime CIA veteran who served as an NSC director on the China desk under the bush administration and spent six years under Obama editing the presidential daily brief before concluding his career in government as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific.

                    Outtro Music: Ukranian rap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDXAAh-cXw

                    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                    47 min
                  • AI's Regulatory Future in the US, China, and EU

                    With AI on the verge of transforming the world, how are regulators across the globe approaching the challenges the technology might pose?

                    Also, what does US-China AI collaboration look like today, and will it get caught up in broader tensions in the relationship?

                    Matt Sheehan and Hadrien Pouget, who are both at Carnegie, come on to discuss.

                    Matt's paper on US-China collaboration: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-democracies-cooperate-with-china-on-ai-research/

                    Matt's work on Chinese algorithmic regulation: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/12/09/what-china-s-algorithm-registry-reveals-about-ai-governance-pub-88606

                    Hadrien's article about the EU: https://www.lawfareblog.com/eus-ai-act-barreling-toward-ai-standards-do-not-exist

                    Outtro Music: Monkey Bee: A Short Film by Jamie Hewlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y90ONojCc6Q

                    Subscribe to the newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/

                    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                    56 min

                  About ChinaEconTalk

                  From the publisher's feed

                  A weekly conversation exploring China's economy and tech scene. Guests include a wide range of policy analysts, business professionals, journalists, and academics. A SupChina production, hosted by…